Connect & Drive (C&D)

Connect & Drive (C&D) is an advanced driver assistance system (ADA) research project starting from January 2009. It is funded by High Tech Automotive System (HTAS) in the Netherlands. This project aims to design and develop new generation vehicles equipped with ADA systems in order to improve the current traffic congestions, the road capacity, and safety in the Netherlands. Study shows that conventional ACC systems have limited impacts on the traffic flow. We believe with more and precise information gathered through wireless communication from other vehicles and Road Side Units (RSUs), more precise advices or actions can be taken to smooth the traffic jams. Drivers can gain longer anticipation time. Vehicles can better coordinate and cooperate with each other. Therefore, C&D project focuses on CACC and CCC systems to improve the road condition. Three basic traffic situations of platoons attract our special interests:

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Increase the size of a platoon, especially when vehicles cut into a platoon, for example, at merging junctions, lane drop, and etc.

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Decrease the size of a platoon, especially when vehicles cut out from a platoon, for example, at existing splits, lane widening, and etc.

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Sudden changes in a platoon, especially when one or more vehicles brake, accelerate, decelerate, and incidents.

A prototype of vehicles equipped with CACC and CCC systems will be set up for real field testing. However, real-field vehicles test can only be implemented small-scale due to the cost and safety reasons. The test is not sufficient to demonstrate all the possible situations in highways. Further, in some cases, it is not enough to observe the impacts, such as shockwave mitigation, on the entire traffic with small-scale tests. Therefore, we are developing the simulation environment to evaluate the performance of the proposed CACC and CCC systems from macroscopic perspective. We aim to analyze the traffic flow with different penetration rate of ADA vehicles under the above mentioned traffic scenarios. Currently, we are designing a RSU-based merging assistance for high-way merging to improve the throughput and reduce the disturbance to the main-lane vehicles caused by merging vehicles.